Bedtime Story for 6-Year-Old About Jealousy | Fabled
On the morning of Maya's birthday party, the boy woke up with a stomachache that wasn't really a stomachache at all.
Maya was his best friend. She lived three houses down, and they walked to school together every single day. She always shared her apple slices at lunch, the green ones, which were his favorite. He loved Maya.
But today she was turning seven, and he was still six. And her parents had rented a bouncy castle.
He didn't have a bouncy castle at his birthday. He'd had a treasure hunt in the backyard and homemade cupcakes with lopsided frosting. It was fun. He'd thought it was fun. But now, looking out his window at the enormous rainbow castle inflating in Maya's front yard, his party felt small. Wrong, somehow.
His mom called up the stairs. Time to get dressed.
He put on his red shirt, the one Maya said made him look like a superhero. He wrapped her present in paper covered with tiny rockets. He'd picked it out himself: a journal with a lock and two keys, so they could share secrets. He'd been excited about it for weeks.
Now the box felt light in his hands. Cheap.
At the party, Maya wore a crown made of real flowers. Daisies and little purple things he didn't know the name of. Everyone gathered around her like she was the sun. He hung back near the fence, picking at a splinter in the wood.
"Come bounce with me!" Maya grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the castle.
He went. But inside, while the other kids screamed and laughed and fell into each other, he couldn't make himself jump high. His legs felt heavy. Every time Maya smiled at someone else, something twisted in his chest. Like a wet towel being wrung out.
Then came the presents.
Maya opened a stuffed unicorn the size of a golden retriever. She opened art supplies in a wooden case with brass latches. She opened a necklace with a tiny diamond chip that caught the light.
His rocket-paper box sat at the bottom of the pile. Small. Quiet.
When Maya finally reached it, she tore off the paper and opened the lid. She went very still.
"Oh," she said. Just that. Oh.
Then she looked up at him, and her whole face changed. Soft. Bright.
"This is the best one," she whispered. She held up the two tiny keys on their separate chains. "We can write secrets. You keep one key and I keep one key and nobody else can ever read them."
She put her key around her neck right then, before she opened anything else.
Later, after cake, after the bouncy castle deflated with a long tired sigh, the two of them sat on her porch steps. The sky had gone pink and orange. Maya's flower crown was wilting, petals falling into her lap.
"I wished you had a bouncy castle at your party," she said.
He looked at her. "What?"
"I wanted one so bad. But then I thought about your treasure hunt, and how your mom hid that clue inside the birdhouse, and how we had to climb the ladder together to find it." She smiled, a small crooked smile. "I told my mom I wanted that instead. She said it was too late. The castle was already paid for."
He sat with that for a moment. The wet-towel feeling in his chest loosened. Just a little. Just enough.
"I liked your party," he said. And he meant it now.
"I liked yours more." She bumped her shoulder against his. "But don't tell anyone. I don't want to hurt the bouncy castle's feelings."
He laughed. A real one.
They watched the sky fade to purple, and he felt the last tight thing inside him let go. Maya's key glinted at her throat. His sat in his pocket, warm against his leg.
Some things, he was learning, don't look like much. But they hold everything.
Lesson of the story: What matters most isn't always what looks the biggest or shiniest.
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